Heather Jones

Heather Jones

Heather Jones makes Information Graphics for TIME. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics and CBS Interactive amongst others. She studied at Otis Parsons School of Art & Design and lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on twitter at @msjonesnyc

What Kind of Sandwich Is Your Relationship?

Shall I compare thee to a meatball sub?

The new rom-com What If (out Aug. 8) stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan. It also stars a sandwich.

And not just any sandwich: the film features the Fool’s Gold, a sandwich so grand its name gets capitalized. The sandwich, as What If explains, is made by buttering up an entire loaf of French or Italian white bread, baking it till the butter turns it golden and then stuffing the whole thing with a pound of bacon, an entire jar of peanut butter and an entire jar of jam. (Yum?) It was a favorite of Elvis Presley’s — he once, legend has it, flew to Denver to get one from the restaurant that invented the sandwich, ate it on his private plane and then turned right back around and went home to Mempis — and, as screenwriter Elan Mastai tells TIME, it’s also a major storytelling device.

“I only wrote the movie to introduce the sandwich to mainstream America.” he jokes. “Why else even write it?” In actuality, the sandwich started off as a small joke (and played a much smaller role in the play on which the movie is based), but Mastai decided there was good reason to return to it again and again. ““I love the idea of this sandwich coming back as this weird, off-kilter, messy love letter,” he says. “That theme of love being messy, and romance and friendship being messy and embracing the messiness of it — the sandwich started to feel like a weird but effective metaphor for that.”

Which got us thinking: isn’t there an appropriate sandwich metaphor for every relationship? After all, from the zing of a banh mi to the reliability of tuna salad, the variety of sandwiches in the world is as vast as the variety of love.

Take our thoroughly scientific quiz to find out which sandwich best represents your relationship:

The Strain Moves the Sexy-vs.-Scary Needle for Pop Culture’s Vampires

Fear is back, when it comes to vampires

Graphic by Heather Jones for TIME

It’s been a not-so-fearsome few years for vampires. Thanks to YA fare like Twilight and Vampire Academy, vampires are now the go-to sexy beasts — especially male vampires struggling oh-so-diligently to resist attaching their lips to some lady’s neck. In the pilot of FX’s new show Married, premiering July 17, the vampire-fantasy trope is so established that it’s ripe for parody.

But the reign of sexiness in vampire land just got a serious challenge: The Strain, also from FX, which premiered Sunday.

As James Poniewozik noted in his review of the show for TIME, it’s “an oozy, disgusting vampire drama” full of “gross-out depictions of vampiric biology.” These vamps are meant to be scary, not sexy. So, in honor of the new addition to the vampire canon, we took a look at how some of our favorite bloodsucking shows, movies and books stack up.

Everything You Need to Know About Game of Thrones

A comprehensive guide to a very complicated show

HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones returns to screens Sunday for season 4 to titillate viewers with gratuitous nudity, violence and Peter Dinklage. But if the show’s expansive cast, complex mythology and labyrinthine storylines have you confused, you’re in luck. Here’s a visual refresher which shows the characters’ many allegiances and animosities — and everything in between.

To explore the graphic on desktop, hover your mouse; on touch screen devices, touch and drag. To view the image at full size, click or tap here.

What Makes An Oscar Winner

Is it survival, honor or a punch in the face? A break down of all Best Picture winners since 1970 into their most common themes. See how this year's contenders stack up

Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards stick to a well-thumbed manual. It’s a pantheon crowded with mafia bosses, adultery, flashbacks, fist fights and dream sequences, not to mention a miles-long parade of naked bodies.

This chart uses IMDB keywords and original research to chart 30 of the most common themes, characters, locations and patterns from every winner back to 1970. See how the nine movies up for this year’s nod compare to past Hollywood royalty. Click the labels to reorder the boxes.

While packing a movie full of popular keywords doesn’t make you a winner—otherwise, The Wolf of Wall Street would be the runaway favorite—there are some lessons to be learned. Many past winners have laid off the opening credits, and nearly twice as many winners featured naked women rather over naked men. Houses of God also show up twice as often as nightclubs. With all the violence and infidelity going on here, that might be a good thing.

From the Beatles to One Direction, all the young dudes are 'N Sync

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This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in the U.S. and the Fab Four’s legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964. While the lads quickly distanced themselves from their largely fabricated image as mop-topped Beatlemania-inspiring dreamboats, their blueprint for a successful boy band–smart one (John Lennon), cute one (Paul McCartney), quiet one (George Harrison) and funny one (Ringo Starr)–lives on. …